PH | Solon wants there to be no tax on rice imports to bring down the price of rice | MANILA – This time, Rep. Bienvenido M. Abante Jr. from Manila’s 6th District gave his support to plans to stop or lower taxes on rice imports to make it cheaper.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the veteran lawmaker said, “Everything should be done to make sure our people don’t have to struggle to put food on the table.”
“Rice is a staple food that makes up most of the money Filipino people spend on food.”If it’s expensive, mom and dad will be cheap, and the kids will go hungry,” he said.
He said that the suggestion from the Department of Finance (DOF) to lower tariff rates should be changed to “suspension” to help poor families, who are most hurt by high rice prices.
The DOF wants to stop the rise in rice prices by lowering the rice tax rate from 35% to 10% or even to 0% for a short time.
The suggestion comes a week after Malacaang put price limits on regular milled rice sold in wet markets and retail stores (PHP41 per kilo) and well-milled rice (PHP45 per kilo).
Section 1608 of Republic Act No. 10863, or the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act, gives the President the power to “increase, decrease, or remove existing rates of import duty, including any necessary change in classification.”
The law, on the other hand, says that the President can only do this when Congress is not meeting.
Congress will stop meeting on Sept. 30 and start back up again on Nov. 6. (via PNA)
